Garfield County Attorney Wallace Lee, who led the prosecution against Barnes, said he often hears complaints that prosecutors "stack" charges against defendants as a way to coerce them into accepting plea agreements.

"I honestly don't think that's a valid claim," Lee said. "The prosecutors that I know and have dealt with would charge the maximum that they think they could prove, but I don't think they would charge it just as a means of getting a plea bargain."

"You have to be able to make sure that some individuals who would do others great harm are taken out of that position," he says. "Until such time as society can ensure that these people, who have proven their capabilities to kill and maim and rape others, won't try to kill guards, hospital staff, other inmates and so forth, I will continue to support the death penalty."

The governor has not seen the need for a commission or a moratorium because the courts have been aggressive in making sure capital punishment is administered fairly," spokesman Micah Rasmussen said.

Early on in his term, [Lt. Gov.] Michael Steele voiced religious and moral opposition to the death penalty and vowed to create a task force to study issues of racial bias in capital sentencing.

But death penalty opponents tell the Washington Post, Steele's office now rarely returns their phone calls, the task force is nowhere on the horizon, and the racial disparity noted in other death penalty studies isn't being addressed.

Eight years after the statute went into effect, only seven convicted killers have been condemned to death. And on the automatic appeals of the first two of those men to the state's highest court, the court has set aside those death sentences.
. . .
"We have some Court of Appeals justices that are now involved in technically 'nit-picking' New York's death penalty to death," [State Senator Dale] Volker said. "Justice continues to be delayed and justice continues to be denied."

On Tuesday, the Court of Appeals overturned a death sentence for the second time, in the case of a Syracuse-area man convicted of killing his wife.
. . .
[T]he bitterly worded 4-2 decision did begin to reveal how the divided judges line up on the issue, one of the most volatile the court has faced in years. Two judges, some death penalty lawyers said, appear committed to capital punishment. Two seem troubled by the law. And two may be willing to let the issue play itself out over many years with case-by-case rulings.

Scotland's soaring murder rate is blamed on a "booze and blade" culture among the young. According to the statistics, there were 127 homicide victims in Scotland in 2002, 11 more than in 2001 and the highest annual total since 1996. In more than half of those murders a sharp instrument was used and in at least 44 per cent of cases the accused was drunk. In 10 per cent of cases, the accused was on drugs and in 15 per cent of cases, drunk and on drugs.
. . .
Groups of youngsters, with names such as the Young Southside Cumbie and the Royston Shamrock, wander the city centre at night armed with knives and heavy leather belts, often high on drink or drugs.

The gangs also trade insults in cyberspace, because each group has a website boasting of violent exploits and glorifying the gang culture. They then head into the city centre, looking for fights.

La Thi Kim Oanh, a notorious embezzler of public funds, will face a firing squad if the Ha Noi People's Court, which is trying her and her accomplices, honours the death penalty request made by the city's People's Procuracy.

After Trentadue's body was found, with his face bloodied and bruised and his throat cut, prison officials concluded he hanged himself. The local medical examiner openly questioned the conclusion.

Numerous internal probes by the government reaffirmed the suicide ruling but found Justice employees had lied during the case and that evidence was lost or mishandled, including a bloody sheet that was stuffed in an FBI car and putrefied, destroying its value as evidence. The cell was cleaned before forensic analysis and the noose that prison officials claimed had been cut down with the body was found intact.
. . .
An FBI agent divulged in court that he found two different types of blood stains on the mattress, one belonging to Trentadue and another from an unidentified person. But the second blood spot wasn't tested because there were no suspects and the mattress had been used by several prisoners over the years, officials said.

The memo suggests administrators call in no more than 50 jurors for death penalty cases and no more than 30 for life felony trials. . . [D]eath penalty cases normally require more than 100 jurors and life felony trials commonly use 60 jurors.

He cried, sniffled and took long pauses as he recounted how he taught Lee to ride a bicycle and play catch. He said he would buy him ice cream practically every night because the boy loved it so much.

Defense attorneys had a handful for photographs from Malvo's youth they wanted the jury to see.

But Fairfax Commonwealth's Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr. objected, saying pictures of Malvo as a young boy had no relevancy to whether he was guilty of the murder of Linda Franklin.

Judge Jane Marum Roush ruled that the defense could pick three photographs to show the jury.

During his testimony, defense attorneys showed jurors photos of the suspect being christened and of a young Lee with his mother and with his father.

Semone Powell, a second cousin, testified that James beat Malvo even though he was an obedient child. She would get upset if she asked Malvo to bring her a basket and she thought the boy moved too slowly, Powell said.

"She would hit him, hit him randomly all over his body with her hand," Powell testified, adding that James also threw shoes at Malvo, pulled his hair and yelled at him.

Lloyd Barrett of Kingston, Jamaica, testified for the defense Tuesday that he saw Malvo regularly until the boy was about 6 years old and that "he was always a loving kid."
AND
"He was dependable and hardworking, and whenever he was given a task he would pursue it to the end," said Beryl Spencejack, Malvo's sixth-grade teacher in Jamaica.

He arrived on a plane from St. Martin, Lawrence said, and lived on their farm with her, her husband and two daughters for nearly two years. Malvo was about 9 years old and “very obedient,” she testified.

Only rarely did she have to whip him with a strap, Lawrence testified. "He tried to obey, because I don't joke."

. . .

After her testimony, Lawrence paused as she left the courtroom, breaking into tears as she passed Malvo.

. . .

Her husband, John Lawrence, also testified. He described his relationship with Malvo as being like that of a father and son.

"The thing is this, with Lee around, he loves to ask questions," said John Lawrence, who testified through a translator.

He said he first met Malvo in the spring of 2002 and that Muhammad and Malvo would sometimes stay with him for periods ranging from a few days to two weeks.

Malvo was a quiet and well-behaved child, Holmes testified. He said that Malvo and Muhammad were on a regular program of running and weight lifting at the local YMCA.

"I think it's part of the war on terrorism," Mr Ebert said. "This type of conduct and the attempt to intimidate the government cannot be tolerated here or abroad, so I think from that standpoint on that point the jury got the message and they decided accordingly."

One of the biggest mistakes of convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad might have been extending his killing spree to Virginia, the only state in which death sentences are carried out more often than not.
. . .
From 1977 through 2002, Virginia executed 64 percent of the 137 people sentenced to death in the state, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Missouri was a distant second at 35 percent, followed by Texas at 31 percent.
. . .
Critics of Virginia's system also note that the Virginia Supreme Court and the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals virtually always deny relief to death row appellants, often because of procedural issues like missed deadlines or failure to raise a claim at trial.

Whether the braggadocio of a teenager, the fatalism of a captured suspect who allegedly left heaps of forensic evidence in his wake, or simply the unvarnished truth as spoken by a pathological and unapologetic killer, Malvo's own words came back to damn him here yesterday.

And everyone in the courtroom visibly recoiled.

The speaker of Indonesia's top legislative body on Thursday urged the death penalty for convicted terrorists and said such sentences should not be subject to appeal.

"This is no ordinary crime," Amien Rais told a group of foreign reporters in Jakarta. "Once it is proven that terrorists committed the crime, we have to banish them from the earth and the sooner the better."

Prosecutors said . . . that the university student's acts had been driven by anger toward his mother, who had advised him on how to deal with his insomnia, an act that he felt to be patronizing.

Mack’s sister, Luviser “Tweety” Thomas, yelled, kicked and screamed after watching video footage of the crime scene, where her brother and Johnson were filmed on the ground covered with yellow tarps.

Tweety Thomas yelled, “Oh my God, oh my God,” as two bailiffs quickly carried her out of the courtroom.

Sgt. Brent Asbury was evaluated earlier this year and received just below the maximum score of 100, . . . but a supervisor said the score was too high and "arbitrarily reduced it" by about 10 points, saying it had to fall within a lower range.

A score of 100 on the evaluation translates into a 4.25 percent raise, but an 85 drops an employee down to less than 3 percent and an 80, which . . . is supposed to earn an average, cost-of-living raise, gets the employee a 2.25 percent raise.

Asbury filed a grievance. The complaint was determined ungrievable, so [his attorney] filed a petition with the Circuit Court and was given his high score back. Asbury could not be reached for comment Monday.

After the jurors left the courtroom, prosecutor Robert F. Horan Jr. told Judge Jane Marum Roush that a prosecution mental-health expert planned to interview and evaluate Malvo on Friday afternoon. Roush had scheduled a short, three-hour session for that day.

Craig S. Cooley, the lead defense lawyer, asked whether the court day could be extended a few hours so he could begin putting on a case for which witnesses are flying in from far-off places.

Horan, who earlier said the prosecution case may wind up Friday morning, responded heatedly that evaluating Malvo's mental state would take time. He said the defense had supplied him this week with a new, 40-page mental evaluation that differed in some ways from an earlier defense report on Malvo's psychology.

Cooley said outside the courtroom that he disagrees.

"There are no dramatic differences whatsoever," Cooley said. "It is simply a more detailed report."

[W]hen FBI Special Agent John Hair took the stand and specifically mentioned Newport News, Hampton and Norfolk, the jurors, all Virginia Beach residents, reacted visibly. Some appeared stunned, gasped or looked at each other.

Manteca Officers Steve Harris and Sam Gallego . . . burst into a Ripon residence without a warrant, handcuffed resident James Walton and, after he made a sarcastic comment, threw him on his bed and threatened: "We could kill you right here."

Malvo's attorney had to ask the lead prosecutor, Fairfax Commonwealth's Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr., to support an application for a new parole for James. Horan declined.

Sources close to the case said that on Nov. 10, the opening day of Malvo's trial, defense attorneys presented Horan with a letter to Homeland Security requesting another parole for James. The sources said Horan told Malvo's attorneys that they should take the matter up with the federal government.

Defense attorney Jonathan Shapiro called Dancy a "liar" under cross-examination, saying he repeatedly lied to authorities on the gun purchase. And he questioned whether Dancy had a plea agreement with prosecutors to avoid being charged with firearms violations.

"I haven't seen the paperwork," Dancy said in response.

Five years later, only a handful have been released, and critics of the commitment process — psychiatrists, civil-liberties advocates and even some early supporters of the law — are concerned that it is merely an exercise rigged to keep sex offenders locked up for a lifetime.

"I do think it's prejudicial," [judge] Roush said after hearing the tape. "Whatever probative value it has is outweighed by the prejudicial impact."

Prosecutors refused to divulge details of the incident, but said "the words of the defendant himself" would support their argument, and said he was placed in solitary confinement as a result of the attempted escape.

Richard Friedman, a University of Michigan law professor who is an expert on evidence, said the Brady doctrine "is not based on the idea that prosecutors should be doing the defense's job. I don't think anybody else in the government would have the responsibility to communicate what they knew about this witness. . . . It's a big government."

Sentencing disparities based on geography and race, prosecutorial misconduct, inadequate representation by defense attorneys, and an appeals system that ignores evidence of innocence are some of the problems listed in a report by the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia.

While critics denounced the study as nothing new from a predictable source, the ACLU found an unlikely ally this year in its call for a moratorium - the Rutherford Institute, a conservative-leaning civil liberties group based in Charlottesville.

"Human life is too sacred to be taken away in a system as flawed as the commonwealth of Virginia's," Rutherford Institute Director John Whitehead said at a capital news conference.

"Whatever one's views of the merits of capital punishment may be, no one supports the execution of an innocent person."

Cooley showed jurors a photo of a 15-year-old Malvo holding a Bible in his hand.

"That's the child that John Muhammad started with," Cooley said as he pointed at the photo. "What Mr. Horan told you today is the child that John Muhammad ended with."

Defense attorney Peter Greenspun, meanwhile, told the jury that the commonwealth had presented a case based on speculation, suspicion and innuendo. There was no evidence that anyone saw from where the fatal shots came, Greenspun said

Instead, he suggested, prosecutors built their case around a theory - "a theme" suggested by a British sniper expert - and then tried to find ways to support it. Greenspun said the evidence really pointed to Malvo, who is on trial in Chesapeake.

The part of the Inspector General's investigation dealing with Bender [the prosecution's ATF expert] followed up on a 1991-1992 FBI probe of Bender and his co-worker at the FBI lab, agent Terry Rudolph. Both investigations stemmed from allegations made by FBI agent Frederic Whitehurst, who succeeded Rudolph at the lab. Whitehurst accused Rudolph and Bender of being racists whose biases negatively affected their work product.

According to FBI documents obtained by CNN, Whitehurst told investigators in 1990 that "both Rudolph and Bender continually and loudly expressed strong racial prejudice using such words as 'jungle bunnies' and 'niggers' repeatedly" in his presence.

In opening statements tomorrow in Malvo's trial, prosecution and defense teams are likely to lay out road maps of sorts of the cases they intend to present to jurors.

Fairfax County chief prosecutor Robert F. Horan is expected to portray Malvo as a willing killer who laughed and bragged as he told police investigators about his role in the sniper attacks.

Defense attorney Craig S. Cooley, meanwhile, said he will tell jurors that Malvo is not guilty by reason of insanity because he had been brainwashed by the older Muhammad.

It's the longest of long shots but it is a strategy that makes perfect sense given that Malvo's lawyers cannot tell jurors with a straight face that their client had nothing to do with Franklin's death. Rather than deny the obvious, then, Malvo's attorneys will instead try an insanity defense designed to paint their client as — almost literally — a killing machine programmed by Muhammad for death and destruction. Problem is, insanity defenses almost never work, especially when the period of alleged "insanity" lasted for weeks, which is what Malvo's attorneys will have to argue given the duration of last fall's sniper attacks. It's not just a temporal issue, either. There is plenty of evidence from the Muhammad trial that the pair meticulously planned their attacks — something Malvo's prosecutors surely will note when they talk about whether Malvo knew right from wrong.

Malvo's attorneys are talking insanity, then, not to gain an acquittal but to better their chances of avoiding a death sentence for their client. By raising the defense, Malvo's lawyers can hammer away on jurors from the start of the trial that Malvo would never have done what he is accused of doing without the intense and effective influence of Muhammad. Over and over again, we are likely to hear Malvo's attorneys say that their client didn't just snap like the typical insanity defendant but instead was manipulated by the older suspect over a long period of time into thinking that killing was OK if it made Muhammad happy. The idea is that this concept will be plausible enough given Malvo's tortured background to convince at least one juror to give the kid a break during sentencing.

They kill teenagers in Virginia, by law — three juveniles sent to death row since 1976. It is for this reason — Virginia's aggressive prosecution of young people on capital charges, its disinclination toward mercy even for juveniles — that prosecutors from two states and the District of Columbia agreed to have Malvo tried here first for one specific killing, the murder of 47-year-old FBI analyst Linda Franklin on Oct. 14, 2002.

The final jury was culled from a pool of 28 this morning. Both prosecutors and defense attorneys were allowed to eliminate six jurors each without explanation.

Prosecutor Robert F. Horan Jr. made the first choice by marking a document with the list of jurors and their assigned numbers. Horan then handed the list to a court officer, who handed it to defense attorney Craig S. Cooley. Cooley made his selection and the court office passed the list back to Horan.

The process was repeated until all 16 jurors were chosen, which took less than 20 minutes. Before Cooley made one choice, he spoke to Malvo, who whispered something back and then Cooley marked the list with his choice.

Robert J. Cleary, the lead federal prosecutor in the trial of Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, said the jurors selected in Malvo's trial seemed generally favorable to the defense: "If I were the defense, I would want to have jurors with children, and preferably people who had teen-age children, to identify a little with Malvo."

Cooley also asked Roush to order prosecutors to turn over to him the criminal background checks on members of the jury pool that prosecutors had gathered. He said the backgrounds checks gave the prosecution an unfair advantage in the final phase of jury selection.

Horan rose from his seat and indignantly dismissed Cooley's assertion, saying that the defense had their own jury selection experts "upstairs" and added that if a potential juror did have a criminal background, it would likely benefit the defense rather than the prosecution.

Roush denied that motion, too.

Prosecutors would not comment [about jury selection], other than to say that one potential juror who appeared to have a grand larceny conviction but failed to admit it when questioned was among those they rejected - and will be reported to authorities.

Of the 28 finalists, 10 are white women, 10 are white men, five are black women, two are black men, and one is an Asian man. Each side will get six peremptory strikes to reduce the group to 16. Four of those remaining will be chosen as alternates before the trial begins Thursday with opening statements, but they will not be notified of their status until after closing arguments.

"We'll be putting on an affirmative defense of insanity," Cooley told jury candidates at one point. "Indoctrination is a form of insanity."

Horan immediately rose to his feet and objected. "Indoctrination is not a form of insanity," he said, his voice rising. "It's not."

"It is a dissociative disorder," Cooley countered. He said indoctrination can be found in a manual listing mental diagnoses and illnesses and widely used by those in the mental health profession.

Judge Jane Marum Roush intervened and overruled Horan's objection. She said defense lawyers have a right to inquire whether prospective jurors would fairly consider the defense's theory of the case - that a personality disorder means Malvo is not responsible for his alleged crimes. How much weight to give mental-health experts is for the jury to decide, she said.

City Manager Calvin D. Jamison pledged last night to get more of his bureaucracy fighting violent crime and reach out to businesses, schools and clergy for help now that Richmond's homicide count is up sharply.

"The government is seeking to kill Mr. Rudolph. ... Our investigation must be exhaustive. ... [I]t is totally unrealistic to expect the four members to review in the five months since their appointment what it has taken the government five years ... to collect, decipher and interpret."

[T]he most novel response [to 9-11] came in a fax sent within hours after the attacks by a psychiatrist ... by the name of S. Miles Estner. He was under subpoena to testify in a murder case as a defense witness.

The defendant, Jeffrey Kiehm, a twenty-year-old man with a history of mental instability [killed his drug dealer to see if he could kill someone in a planned bank robbery].

"I cannot and will not be available to this court in the matter of Jeffrey Kiehn for a period of at least several weeks," Estner said in a fax sent to Judge Jimmy Long within hours of the September 11 attacks. "It goes almost without saying that we are in a National Crisis and that my family and friends on the East Coast look to me for guidance and need me to be there right now.

"I was born and raised in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, where my elderly father still resides, alone, a handicapped widower, and where I attended Medical School. As you must know, one of the terrorist plane crashes occurred nearby. He needs my help more than any criminal defendant or criminal defense attorney, despite their interests.

"In addition a substantial portion of my medical education and training were in New York City and Washington, D.C., where I also have family and friends to whom I must and will attend.

"In the hopes that you will understand my predicament, I hope that the Kiehm trial can be delayed or - retried, and, frankly, [the defense attorney's] unprofessional and illegal attempts to compel my appearance, despite my personal tragedies, have soured me on this matter altogether."

"Furthermore, it seems clear that there will be no air traffic to allow my travel from this distant location. I am not sure the roads leading to Sacramento from [San Luis Obispo] are accessible.

"I apologize for any inconvenience to the Court, the Jury, or the Defendant, with his right to speedy trial. As for [the defense lawyer] he has been so unsympathetic to my predicament that I plan and hope to have no further dealings with him.

"Thank you in advance for your appreciation of my predicament and conflicts in these regards. I hope that Justice will be served and apologize for my inability to participate in it at this time."

"I was informed by my office that Dr. Estner was refusing to appear in court because of fear that the courthouse would be the target of terrorists," [the defense attorney] said in his own fax to the judge and prosecutor. "When I learned that, I requested that my partner, Amy Morton, call Dr. Estner and explain to him that he had to be in court.

"Dr. Estner told her that he would not appear in court and he repeated over and over, 'It's not happening.' When Ms. Morton asked him why, he said he wouldn't travel until things were settled down. He was described as whispering as he told her roads were closed and 'it's not happening.' In spite of telling him how important his testimony would be, he continued [about] refusing to appear and he sounded extremely distressed."

[The attorney] told the judge he then called Dr. Estner himself on his cell phone and at his home and got the following message from the doctor's message service: "Hello, it's Dr. Estner. It's approximately eight A.M. Tuesday, September eleventh. I believe the country is in a state of crisis. I will not be receiving or returning calls until the matters have been clarified. Thank you so much. Bye-bye."

Inmate pro pers, as a class, are as much of a pain in the butt as judges who've just returned from a conference. You just know when you start with 'em that they're gonna be fixated on some crazy idea they picked up last week from some guy who's never previously been able to convince anybody to do it.

And you're gonna have to explain to them why that is.